A game involved with Norse mythology, inspired by classic adventure games with a female protagonist.

A greatly enjoyable story, it has kept me hooked giving me optional quests with alternative solutions.
Battling monsters, solving puzzles and saving the world!

You start off with choosing between 3 classes: Warrior, Sorceress and Rogue. Or have a mixture to your liking.
The game contains superb music and dialogues, mostly voice acted along with nicely done character portraits.
There is also another feature I quite like in the game, was the realism feel to when your character gets cold or hungry. How it effects her during the game, giving you more of a challenge whilst playing. But there is a choice to to turn down the difficulty if you didn't prefer it.

This does bring me back memories when I use to play Kings Quest.

Thank you to all the developers for this amazing free game!

Heroine's Quest: The Herald Of Ragnarok is a independent roleplaying game developed by Crystal Shard and published by Screen 7. The title is set in a fantasy realm and tasks your character, a burgeoning young adventurer, with saving the world from an ancient evil bent on bringing about Ragnarok and thus ending the world as we know it. As with most classic R.P.G.'s you choose your character class, there are three to pick from in this title, and as your character levels up you gain experience points for whichever abilities you use frequently like the old saying "the more you do something the better you get at it".

The story in this game is quite entertaining and chock full of viking lore and mythology. The gameplay and combat while simple are both quite fun and highly addictive. You'll die time and time again and scream to the heavens that you'll never play this @#$%& game again only to boot it up two hours later. There are many types of unique adversaries to battle and puzzling puzzles to solve. The dialog and voice acting is top notch. You'll converse with people and creatures which could terrify you or make you laugh your pants off with the strange and sometimes hilarious things that they say or do. The title has a great immersive feel to as it applies a timescale of morning, afternoon and evening to the questing. Your character also must feed herself, can suffer from exposure due to the harsh climate and needs sleep or rest to remain healthy just like in real life. The sound and music in this title are terrific and definitely capture the feel of the game perfectly.

If you're perceptive enough you will also get a kick out of the many pop-culture references and game developement jokes humorously sprinkled about the title...some of which will make you laugh out loud. The developers certainly aren't afraid to laugh at themselves or anyone else. This game is just fantastic and I am having so much fun playing it and one really great thing is that it is free which is shocking because I would have gladly paid for this amount of entertainment. If you're a fan of old-school roleplaying games, retro-games or just crave a great adventure title then you will not be dissapointed with this wonderful independent gem. One more thing to add, many people say that this title plays like the old "Quest For Glory" series of games which I myself am not familiar with but I think this game plays like Skyrim...if Skyrim had come out in 1991.

If I could recommend this twice, I would.

I grew up in the Sierra games era. A beautiful time to be a gamer. Truly. This game is quite the King's Quest homage.

If you enjoyed the awesomeness of Sierra's point-and-click adventures, get this game. You will have ZERO regrets.

LOVE IT.

(PS: As I was corrected, it is more a homage to the Quest for Glory series but if you enjoyed any of Sierra's point-and-click adventures, you will NOT be disappointed!)

An incredibly good throwback to the old Sierra Hero's Quest aka Quest For Glory games. In many ways this game is better than any of the originals. The combat is better and the addition of extra quests gives more reason to explore the world. It's challenging and charming with great writing and luscious scenery. A very likeable production.

I can't believe such a labour of love is free of charge.

More fun than I've had with most games I've paid for in recent years (so I dropped them a donation - it's only fair!)

The only downside while I was playing is that I felt cross-class solutions were not handled nearly well as in the original Hero's Quest series. You could take cross-class skills, but you most likely couldn't use them because of lacking OTHER skills, or wouldn't be allowed to solve puzzles with them. That may have changed since. I still have a lot left to explore with other playthroughs.

But anyway, if you like old-school Sierra games and you haven't played this yet, WHY NOT??

While there are other credible contenders (like Quest for Infamy) -- and more to come in the next couple years as Hero-U and Mage's Initiation wrap up development -- Heroine's Quest not only the best Quest for Glory game in the past 20+ years, but in some respects the superior of the games that inspired it.

First, let me get the shortcomings out of the way. The production values are not as strong as in the Sierra originals (the animations are a little choppy, the VO is a little amateurish, and the music is not as memorable) -- but those were commercial games made by seasoned veterans with a considerable budget. Heroine's Quest, unlike our Primordia or the majority of other AGS games you find on Steam -- is free, so it couldn't even theoretically recoup paying professional voice actors or the like. More fundamentally, the game seems to lack a little bit of the smoothness of the original QFGs: the grinding feels a little more grindy, the exploration a little too slow, the world somewhat less open and more driven by a linear plot. But to be clear, this is a *relative* comparison, and it is in relation to what I consider some of the best games of all time.

Having cleared that underbrush, let me now sing the game's praises. Most fundamentally, it achieves what I consider the game developer's greatest duty: generosity. That comes through not just through the price (i.e., free), but through the sheer quantity and variety of content. Everywhere the developers could give us more, they have, optional solutions and little Easter Eggs aplenty. That generosity is conveyed through the timeless and sadly underutilized QFG marriage of RPG and adventure game elements. The challenge of that kind of gameplay is that it requires a lot of art, a lot of alternate paths, and careful balance and testing. Heroine's Quest succeeds in all those things.

Earlier, I mentioned that the game exceeds QFG, and the way in which this is so (in my opinion) is the use of the Norse mythology and foklorica. It's not entirely consistent, and sometimes it mixes in modern fantasy elements or interpretations of the source material that don't quite work, but I found overall that it drew more deeply and broadly from this lore than did QFG, where individual elements were often cherry picked without their contextual elements. (For instance, QFG introduced a whole generation to Baba Yaga and her chicken-legged hut, and what a gift that was, but she is hardly surrounded by other Slavic elements -- instead you encounter a hodgepodge of Greek mythological creatures and D&D monsters in a quasi-German setting.) Heroine's Quest has greater consistency in this regard, though it suffers from the fact that Norse folk lore is more familiar so the characters feel less like "discoveries" than did, say, Baba Yaga.

Anyway, the bottom line is that this is a charming labor of love, shared for free, which leaves you with the warm, full feeling of a childhood feast, for those who grew up on QFG, or will serve as a pretty good entry point to genre to those unfamiliar with it. Three cheers for, and many thanks to, Crystal Shard!

I really like this game a lot. I'm a fan of the old Sierra/LucasArts games, and I loved the Quest for Glory games. I thought this would be sort of a cheap, junky fan-based hack of Hero's Quest (the original version of the first Quest for Glory). Boy was I wrong. Sierra would have been proud to publish this back in the day.

It is an homage to Hero's Quest, for sure, and derives its inspiration from it, but it really does interesting things with the formula, and maybe most importantly of all, it's really high-quality. The music is great.

It's free, so you have nothing to lose by giving it a try. I thought I'd find it merely entertaining, but I actually really like it a lot.

Wow...I'm only a few hours in and I already can't believe this game is free of charge!

With all the charm of Quest for Glory/Hero's Quest, I can't believe what love and attention has been put into this game by the creators.

Other reviewers have covered the pros/cons, but I will make it brief: if you played old-school Sierra games (and always dreamed of smacking Cedric with a snowball), definitely give this game your time.

*****Winter Has Come*****

Finally, this game came to Steam and I am sure many people might be puzzled why such a game with a solid manual accompanying it appeared in Steam. Is it a promo? Perhaps a conspiracy? Maybe Valve is buggy? Absolutely not! I have played the game far before it hit Steam, and I'll say it is a real deal.

Ladies and gentlemen, this game is a geniune point&click adventure game in the spirit of old Quest for Glory Series. The inspiration and some mechanics will be familiar to the people who played those games...but you will see it is actually far better then those old games. Let us see what we have in the pot.

First of all, you are playing a Heroine who was travelling to city of Fornsigtuna gets ambushed by an ettin (two-headed giant). But thanks to luck, they are unable to eliminate their target. And from there, your story of heroine-ism starts (of course, your first task is to find some food, naturally)! I should say, playing the game from Heroine perspective adds quite a spice to the game, signifying that the game will be quite different then Quest for Glory games we know.

You can choose from three different kinds of classes with their own unique approach to both main quest and side quests. As well as by buying some cross-class skills you can spice up your game even further...but do not rely on that too much. Three classes are Fighter, Mage and Thief. I would suggest you to take a glance at the manual for the explanation of skills&such which may come in handy.

The dialogues are fully voiced and there is no shortage of interesting characters...where I'd like to refrain mentioning them for the time being. But one major thing you will notice is this: When a character is at the presence of another, the dialogue lines may differ or other character can add a comment of his own...which makes the dialogue system even richer then it already is. Aside that, several minigames (wizard challenges, gambling with Fornsigtuna locals etc) add to the charm of this game.

One major point is the survival. Yes, you have to eat food to survive and on top of that you have to find a way to keep yourself warm...since it is Fimbulwinter...it is more crucial then ever. Since there are several ways to skin a cat, there are several ways to survive. By the way, as you might see the game features a solid inspiration by Norse Mythology...so prepare to meet several characters and events which has a part over there.

You will not regret playing this game. Ragnarok awaits you!

First let me say that I am leaving a negative review only because Steam doesn't allow for a more nuanced rating.
I would tentatively recommend this game, but with caveats. I think a negative review will be more useful to potential players.

To begin with, Heroine's Quest is free, which is a huge point in its favour. It's a well-presented and highly competent homage to Sierra's old Quest for Glory games, which are (mostly) point-and-click adventures with RPG elements such as combat and trainable skills.

You can choose to play a Warrior, a Rogue or a Sorceress. Your choice will define not only your approach to combat, but every aspect of how you interact with the world. A warrior will face most problems head-on and will more easily deal with the freezing temperatures and scarce resources of Jarnvidr. A sorceress will approach challenges indirectly, using magical spells that she will first need to acquire. A rogue will sneak and bluster and find shortcuts unavailable to the other two classes.

Heroine's Quest boasts a rich setting steeped in Norse mythology. Despite some artistic licence and deliberate anachronisms, it is quite faithful to the source. The characters do not exist simply to further your quest; instead they have backstories, goals and routines that make them compelling to interact with. Your role in the world is also well-defined, and it is very satisfying to effect change through clever application of your class abilities.

Unfortunately, there are a number of frustrating factors that leave me unable to recommend this title unequivocally.

One: The game LOVES to lock you into an area without warning. Early in the game I spent a night starving in a town I couldn't leave, and the person who promised me free food wouldn't give me any because his schedule told him to sit and drink instead. This sort of thing occurs several times throughout the game.

Two: It doesn't respect your time. Some puzzles become unwinnable while the text suggests they can still be completed, causing you waste time on them. One major "quest" can't be attempted at all; it's just a reference to a previous game yet it sits on the notice board where you find work.

Three: Tedious combat. When you are just dodging enemy attacks and timing your own, it's great. You get hurt much more than your foe if you both attack simultaneously, and that is all the balance that is necessary. Unfortunately enemies also block, and some enemies block A LOT. This is exceptionally tedious, especially against one particular foe that constantly turns to stone when low on health.

The game also establishes a dodge-then-counterattack rule that it disregards by having enemies randomly attack again after you've begun your counterattack. This especially hurts the sorceress, who is physically frail and whose spells are slow to cast.

Oh, and remember those enemies that turn to stone? Sometimes you'll encounter one, and two more will appear from off-screen. There's no way to predict this and you can't run when it happens. You also can't access the menu to reload your save. You have to slog through and beat them all, or wait to die.

Four: You have to choose between a bearable speed and a beatable speed. Actually at higher speeds the game is merely "pleasantly playable" (the default speed is INCREDIBLY slow) but there are some sequences that won't let you react before killing you. The game will be unresponsive for most of the sequence and then allow input for a fraction of a second, so that sometimes even mashing the appropriate button doesn't work. You can lower the speed of course, but have fun going through that whole sequence again with extremely slow animations! Did I mention the game doesn't let you save during sequences like this?

Five: The finale deserves special mention for locking you into it unprepared and without warning (it actually pretends you can still roam freely, so you'll probably overwrite your save), taking your healing potions(!) forcing combat with an enemy that has an unavoidable attack and, for the sorceress at least, concluding with a trial-and-error sequence that doesn't let you save, and demands precision timing despite being randomly unresponsive.

The final hour or so COMPLETELY soured me on a game which I had been enjoying considerably. And this was WITH a guide, which I started using unreservedly after spending far too long on a puzzle that could no longer be beaten. Without one, I would have given up.

There are some other aspects of the game that I found annoying: bad signposting, weird logic, money and food being hard to find consistently (The herbalism skill lets you gain food ONCE in the entire game), random encounters with random drops that makes gathering resources tedious, defaulting to windowed mode with no way to change in-game (and not locking the cursor to the window)... but the five points I mentioned above were what left a bad taste in my mouth.

Should you play this game? Honestly, if the concept interests you, yes. It's good, it's free, and in many ways it's quite impressive. Just keep multiple saves and be prepared to encounter tedious, anti-player nonsense.